1. Technical Field
This application claims priority to Japanese Patent Application No. 2011-194662 filed on Sep. 7, 2011. The entire disclosure of Japanese Patent Application No. 2011-194662 is hereby incorporated herein by reference.
The present invention relates to liquid ejecting apparatuses that eject a liquid onto a target.
2. Related Art
Thus far, ink jet printers that form images by ejecting a liquid from a liquid ejecting head onto a recording medium such as paper have been known as one type of liquid ejecting apparatus. Among such printers, there are printers that include fixing units that fix ink (the liquid) that has landed on the medium by heating that ink in order to form images (for example, JP-A-2006-175645).
The printer disclosed in JP-A-2006-175645 includes a drawing unit case that encloses a drawing unit in which drawing operations are carried out on the recording medium by an ink jet head (liquid ejecting head), and the fixing unit is provided on the outer side of the drawing unit case. Accordingly, the ink jet head housed within the drawing unit case is suppressed from being heated by the heat produced by the fixing unit.
In addition, openings that serve as an entry port and a discharge port, respectively, for the recording medium are formed in the drawing unit case, and an outside air introduction unit that introduces air from the exterior into the drawing unit case via an outside air introduction port that is separate from the stated openings is connected to the drawing unit case. Accordingly, when air is introduced by the outside air introduction unit into the drawing unit case from the outside air introduction port, an airflow is produced moving from the interior to the exterior of the drawing unit case, and air whose temperature has risen is exhausted from the drawing unit case to the exterior via the openings due to the airflow moving to the exterior.
However, with the stated printer, the air introduced into the drawing unit case from the exterior by the outside air introduction unit produces the airflow within the drawing unit case, and thus an airflow is also produced in a space where the ink jet head and the recording medium face each other during recording. This airflow can influence the accuracy of the flight of the ink (liquid) ejected from the ink jet head toward the recording medium. Accordingly, although the ink jet head can be suppressed from being heated, there is also a risk that the quality of the image formed on the recording medium by the ink jet head will drop.